Hello, I have an Insiginia HomeKit garage door opener that’s currently paired to my normal HomeKit setup, and it works fine for my family as it is. I would like to bring its open/closed status into Home Assistant while keeping control in HomeKit, and being new to this, I am not sure the best way.
In case it helps, my HA install is in Docker on a QNAP NAS, on the same network as the opener.
I considered:
HomeKit automation to fire an HTTP sensor, but those seem ephemeral and I don’t know if that’s right for this status
HomeKit automation to send a Webhook to IFTTT to set a variable, but I don’t know if that’s overkill to receive just a simple boolean value
Add a secondary open/close sensor to the door to get status separate from HomeKit altogether. That is my last resort
I read through Open Sesame: Garage Door Automation with HomeKit and was able to add a Garage Door Trigger to HomeKit, and have a HomeKit automation turn it on or off when opening or closing, but I haven’t been able to get this working to show me state in HA. I have a Garage Trigger “Script” element on my dashboard, but I don’t know how to have it understand states.
I brought in a Template Cover to my configuration, but that seems to be about controlling, and not just showing status.
I would create an input_boolean element in Home Assistant (you can do this using the ‘Helpers’ section in the Home Assistant configuration screen if you are on >0.108). Expose this to HomeKit. This input_boolean element will then show as a switch in HomeKit.
Then you can do the following:
Create two automations in HomeKit: when the garage door opens, it turns the input_boolean on. Similarly, if the garage door closes, set the input_boolean off.
If you want control from Home Assistant to function: create two more automations in HomeKit: if the input_boolean turns on and the garage door is closed, open the garage door. same but in reverse to close it
You can then create a template cover in your configuration using that input_boolean if you want it to be properly represented as a “garage” in Home Assistant.
Thank you! Of course it makes sense once you spell it out. I added the boolean, linked it to HomeKit, and have the automation making it work.
I now have this in Helpers: input_boolean.garage_door and the status is changing with the garage door.
The last part I am struggling with is having it shown as a garage with the template cover. I will keep working on that now. If you could post an example of what I would need for my configuration, I’d really appreciate it. All the cover examples call scripts, and I think I just need to set the boolean value. Once I have that, I’m golden. Right now I have a separate entry for a cover: